Her hands are shaking, slightly, as she says it.
Nora says fine. Eats a corner of cake. Says it’s good, thank you, and Josie says please don’t thank me, Nora, not today. Nothing has gone as I’d hoped.
I know the feeling, Nora says.
Josie looks at her with sympathy, her blue eyes like live wires, but Nora doesn’t want it. She just wants to get herself home; thinks about calling a taxi, now the buses have stopped running. But Josie’s hand is still shaking as she pours the milk, so Nora tries to focus: asks if she’s all right.
Oh, yes, pet. I’ve been all right for a long time now. No scares, with the tablets. No episodes.
But I mean right now, Nora says. You seem.
She nods at Josie’s tremor, as she drops a sugar cube into her cup.
Ah, Josie says, well. I suppose I am a little nervous.
Okay, Nora says.
I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Nora, for a while. See, today wasn’t just a day to lay Jon to rest, physically. But in other ways too.
The grandfather clock thunks from side to side. The rain patters on the window. Nora tells her this is all very cryptic.
It is, isn’t it, Josie says, as she stirs her tea. I hoped your mother would be here, to help, but she … decided against it, in the end. She’d never shy away from confrontation, our Freya, but sentimentality? She’d rather scoop out her ovaries with a spoon, I believe, was the phrasing she used.
This lands, but neither of them laugh. Josie sighs.
I hate to see you hurting, Nora, she says. Just like I hate to see my Bren hurting.
Nora takes a sugar cube for her own cup.
You’re the only one he’d come back for, Josie says. I always knew that. You were such a pair. Full of fun and adventure andspirit. It was nice to see, after he’d always been so reserved, always so … lonesome. It brought me a lot of joy. You and your mother both did, when we moved here.
Tea spinning, heady, in her teacup.
But I always knew he’d leave, Josie says. I knew he’d have to spread his wings, away from me, and my … limitations. And his dad encouraged it, bought him an atlas before he even knew the alphabet. I’m proud of him, Nora, for being so brave. I’m proud that his less-than-ideal childhood made him bolder, if anything, and not a mouse, like me.
Nora does not respond, because she thinks she knows what Josie is getting at. That Bren was always going to come home to her. Because Nora is his home. That she thinks Nora knows it, too, deep down.
But instead she says, I know it’s not conventional, having a son who spends his life elsewhere, like he does. But I’m not saddened by it, or resentful. I’m just happy I get to love him, wherever he is.
Josie looks out of the window, at the rain.
And anyway, she says, I rather think convention is overrated.
Nora forks off another corner of cake.
Freya’s rubbed off on you there, she says, and Josie looks at her over the table and says ah, no. See, that’s the thing, my love. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. If anything, I think I rubbed off on her.
Josie rests her hands on the polished wood table, then. A table where Nora learned to crochet, has drunk tea and dunked biscuits, talked about sparrows and storms, fruit crumble and funerals, spilled milk and psychosis and paint colours. It all seems to weigh between them, the years, the minutes, theknowledge of what is and what isn’t, and the moment is long and loaded. Clunk of the grandfather clock, smatter of rain.
I know, you know, Josie says.
You know what, says Nora.
I know about Freya and Jon.
Another moment, then. Shorter than before. A moment where Nora thinks she must have misheard, so she reddens, clears her throat.
I actually suggested it, Josie says, and Nora coughs on some cake crumbs so that Josie has to stand up, pour her a glass of water from the crystal jug on the side. Flush of pink up her own throat.
